A voltage regulator (VR) may be limited in a maximum current it can supply to a circuit, and in a number of fast current spikes it can handle. To withstand these limitations, expensive voltage regulators may be used and/or voltage/frequency guard-bands may be added, each of which may result in a less attractive product.
A worst case condition may be modeled by a maximal theoretical power consumption scenario (e.g., Power Virus (PV)), which utilizes all micro-architectural (μArch) bandwidths and consumes power far in excess of the power utilized in execution of other applications. The worst case condition can cause extreme slowdown of operations execution, and can be potentially destructive to hardware.